While driving home from my last trail ride a huge thunderstorm with high winds hit. As I proceeded down a stretch of narrow, winding road a tree branch reached out and smashed my Zook's windshield. It's funny, I wheel all day and no breakage and then on the drive home I bust my windshield, don't it figure!?!

Lately I have been reading some stories about these new polycarbonate windshields so I figured there is no time like the present to look into it. Roadless Gear had the answer. They offer a new PolyShield windshield for the Zook and they even include the rubber seal. A quick call and the PolyShield was on its way. It quickly arrived and I was amazed at how lightweight and flexible it was. If this had been glass it would have surely shattered. It had a blue scratch protective coating on it to protect the surface during installation too. This is great! I contacted a friend of mine, Doug Jennings (who has years of practice replacing windshields) to help with the installation. First we removed the windshield frame from the Zook to cause less of a mess when removing the broken glass and to make the Polyshield installation easier. Otherwise, the roll cage would have been in the way and it would made it more difficult. The tools we used for this installation were a rubber hammer, box knife and a seal puller.

Installation of the PolyShield

1. Cut the old seal around the broken windshield with the box knife.

2. Remove the old windshield with the rubber hammer.

3. Scrape clean the epoxy/glue and ensure you remove any remaining pieces of rubber that may be left on the frame.

Note: We installed the inside part of the PolyShield first.

4. Place the PolyShield on the outside of the frame and press it firmly into place.

5. Now use the seal puller to slowly pull the rubber seal over the inner lip on the frame. This is the slow part. Start at the bottom and work your way around the corners.

6. Once you get the backside done flip the frame over and do the same to the front. As you do this apply firm pressure to pop the PolyShield into place.

Most windshield installations can be a real pain in the rear but surprisingly this was not bad at all. It only took us about an hour or so to install the Roadless Gear PolyShield.